


Sunrise

by TheSightlessSniper



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Out of Character, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 08:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6110797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSightlessSniper/pseuds/TheSightlessSniper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You will see many more sunrises in your lifetime, my lord, but I feel as if today’s will be one that…gives birth to something special.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me, pretty much out of nowhere, and forced me to write it. When I wrote I didn't get to sleep until after two in the morning because it wanted me to write it that badly.

He was still having nightmares into his twenties.

Ciel jolted out of a dream, hand instinctively reaching for the pistol under his pillow as though it could do posthumous damage to his torturers. Their horrific faces faded away in the light of daybreak filling his room through the cracks in the window, and he blinked around the room and sighed.

He was truly sick of them. It had been seventeen years since he’d been starved, tortured, and branded by the cult. He was an adult, a married man and a father, who was still having violence-filled dreams of the ordeal, and he was about ready to do just about anything to free him of them.

The terrors that plagued his sleep had changed slightly over the years. After his daughters had been born, the dreams had included them and Lizzie, and the horrors became worse as each horrific dream had included them in the torture. The thought of his family being subject to that was sickening, and something he had made Sebastian vow to never allow to happen should anything happen to him. The demon had accepted the terms, and had shockingly commented that he promised to continue delivering such a protection even after their contract would reach its end. ‘If I could not protect the rest of the Phantomhive family from danger as I have done for their father, what sort of butler would I be?’ the demon had stated with a smirk when Ciel had questioned the promise. Knowing Sebastian couldn’t lie to him was a great comfort, and they spoke no more of the horrors.

Gazing to the side, he looked to the empty space next to him in the large bed. Lizzie had tried to share his bed to sleep after they had married and consummated their union, but every attempt had ended with him thrashing in attempts to tear himself out of the grasp of his tormentors. No amount of calming influence from her presence could soothe him, and she had long since stopped trying to sleep there; her room was across the hall, far enough away that she wouldn’t be awoken by his nightly noise, but close enough that she didn’t feel distanced from him. She had been understanding, even if it had made her a little sad that she couldn’t be near him at night, but at least he could be sure that she was getting enough sleep even on the nights he wasn’t.

A soft knock jolted him from his musings, and he lifted his tired head up. ‘Yes?’

‘My lord?’ The familiar face soothed him somewhat. Sebastian opened the door, head tilted in concern. ‘I heard you call for me.’

Ciel groaned. _Every time…_ ‘Another nightmare, Sebastian,’ he stated quietly, then rolled onto his side to face the windows. His arm touched a cooler patch in the sheets, and he shivered as it stroked his flesh; the summer had been so unrelentingly humid, he had discarded his nightclothes in favour of sleeping bare as a reprieve from the intense heat of the day. He sighed again, blinking at the light seeping through the splits where the curtains met. ‘I would have thought I would have grown out of this by now.’

‘Post-traumatic stress can continue for years, even decades after the fact, my lord,’ Sebastian’s voice gradually moved closer, and he flicked his eyes down to the end of the bed. The demon butler stood, calm as ever, half-leaning against the post of the bed. ‘Can I offer you anything? Would you wish to try and get some more sleep, or shall I bring your breakfast?’

His stomach rejected the idea, squelching uncomfortably and sending him a wave of unwelcome nausea. ‘I think it’s a bit early for breakfast,’ Ciel quietly spoke, shaking his head slightly against the pillow. He furrowed his brow slightly, and lifted one arm to gesture to the chair next to the bed. ‘Would you keep me company until it is time to rise, Sebastian?’

His butler walking to the chair silently answered his request, and he watched on as the demon settled into a more comfortable position. For a brief moment, Ciel could have sworn he saw him relax fully, loosing all aesthetic, then quickly composed himself back into a sitting position. He gave a weak smirk. ‘You can relax if you wish to. It is not as if we are in the public eye. And before you think you have to wake my daughters, Cordelia and Dahlia are both to be awoken by Paula this morning. She is giving them their morning dance lessons and then she and Lizzie are taking them for their dress fittings.’

Since their marriage at age twenty-one, Lizzie had bore him three beautiful children. Cordelia Rachel Phantomhive had been the first at age twenty-two; a beautiful girl that looked like her mother in every single respect and even shared her natural affinity for fencing. Dahlia Eliza Phantomhive had been their second, a year and a day later; there was no mistaking she had her father’s eyes and hair, with Lizzie’s delicately feminine face, and had taken an immediate delight in learning how to fire her first pistol when both her mother and father had insisted they grow up knowing how to defend themselves from less-than-gentlemanly male attention.

And then there had been him.

Isaac Vincent Phantomhive had been born on a spring night two years prior. The birth had been difficult for Elizabeth, lasting long into the night, but eventually he had arrived, with just minutes before it went into the next day. It wasn’t meant to be; born as sickly and weak as Ciel had been at birth, Isaac was not so fortunate as his father had been. Despite every effort of the midwife and the doctors, the little boy had been born too early and had passed away before their eyes just a few minutes after his entrance into the world, exactly one minute after midnight.

The loss had hit him harder than he could have ever imagined. Ciel had never envisioned, when he had made his contract with Sebastian, that he would live much longer than his fourteenth birthday at very most. He hadn’t wanted to long enough to bring another generation into the world.

That had changed when he had held his first child in his arms. As the little girl burbled and made to reach for his nose, he had become a father instantly and completely, and was suddenly grateful that his vengeance was taking so long to wreak. So when his little boy had been taken from him before he had even had the chance to hold him in his arms, it had brought to the surface emotions from his childhood that he thought he would no longer feel.

He cried for the loss of not only his son, but the loss of his father and mother that night, all at once.

Ciel bit his lip as he looked at the demon before him, smirk falling away, and saw the concerned look grow before his eyes. It wasn’t until he blinked that he realised a tear had seeped down his face and soaked into his pillow, greying the white fabric with a salty mark.

So much had happened in seventeen years. Sebastian had been there for every case, every step in looking for revenge, every time he had called his name as he had vowed with their contract. It had been a shock for the Midfords when he had chosen to ask the butler to support him at his wedding as his best man, with Frances outright refusing such a suggestion as unseemly. But at the suggestion, Lizzie had leapt to her feet in a most unladylike fashion and thrown her arms around the butler’s neck in a show of friendly affection, which she had insisted he return. The reaction to such a proposal had sealed the deal, and her soft-touch father Alexis had quickly given in to the idea much to the chagrin of his wife and son.

Sebastian had been there when Cordelia had first fallen sick. The young earl had been in pieces, fearing she had been struck with pneumonia as he cradled her to his chest in the early hours of the morning, tears of panic in his eyes; Sebastian had smiled gently to him, and carefully explained that the symptoms only pointed to a simple case of the sniffles, as was natural with the changing seasons. Procuring a warm bath and a mentholated herbal infusion for the air in her nursery, he had helped Ciel walk through his child’s first sickness and assisted in nursing her back to health without a single complaint, even promising to keep the outburst a secret for him.

He had been there when Dahlia had tried to lift herself to walk for the first time and had fallen from the top of the stairs. The delicate child hadn’t even had the chance to cascade down the top step before the butler had swept the little girl into his arms to safety, comforting a hysterical Lizzie and a grateful Ciel when he presented their daughter back to them unharmed. Dahlia had simply giggled in the butler’s arms and reached for his overgrown bangs, and Ciel could have sworn that the smile that had appeared on those usually smirking lips had been one of the most genuine he had ever given.

He’d been in the room when his son had drawn his first and his last breaths. In the moments where they had needed him, he had somehow known exactly what to do for them. When the doctors had finally prised their son’s body away to prepare him, without trying to seek permission, he had instinctively taken one of their hands in each of his and perched upon the bed with them, a look in his eyes that to an outsider could have been mistaken for total stoicism, but both Ciel and Lizzie had seen through immediately. He hadn’t cried, but they had seen the genuine sorrow behind those red-tinted irises.

It seemed that even demons grieved.

The relationship between Ciel and Lizzie hadn’t changed much despite the tragedy. There was still much love between himself and Lizzie, although mostly it still felt as if they were going through some of the motions of being man and wife. But at the end of it, she was the beautiful mother of his children, and his family, and he still held that favourable fondness for her that he’d had since their childhood. Their marriage was easy and happy, if not completely of a work of true love.

Sebastian had seen the tear, and seemed to sense Ciel’s thoughts. ‘He would have been a fine young gentleman, my lord. When the time is right, you and Elizabeth will have another son,’ he reminded quietly. ‘While women have a clock that tells them their time is up, she is still young and will be fertile for many years. I do have the inkling the next child you sire will be a healthy son-’

‘We almost named him after you.’ The revelation caused the butler’s eyes to widen and to stop mid-sentence. Ciel sat up a little, gathering the sheets to keep himself somewhat decent, and leaned on one arm. ‘When Lizzie and I were first discussing names, we knew we were going to give him Vincent as a middle name. We eventually chose Isaac for a first name, but if Lizzie’s mother hadn’t been so dead set against it…’ he shook his head, then sent the demon a gentle smile, ‘If it had been a little girl, she would have been Matilda Frances Phantomhive…if a boy as he was, he was originally going to be Sebastian Vincent Phantomhive.’

The news was apparently more than a little bit of a shock. Ciel had managed to do a lot of things in his twenty-seven years, but not once had he ever rendered Sebastian quite so entirely speechless before. The butler’s mouth had fallen open, and he could have sworn that there was were tears of sentiment gathering in his eyes as he looked into them. They were gone in a blink, and the expression fell back to a state of neutrality with one exception; the affectionate gaze locked with his. ‘An honour I wouldn’t have deserved, my lord, but one that would have been infinitely appreciated.’

‘On the contrary,’ Ciel rose to be completely sat up, the thin sheet the only thing preserving his modesty before the demon who had bathed him as a child; he had stopped at Ciel’s request at age sixteen, when it had caused several small embarrassments as his hormones had taken over. He shook his head again. ‘It would have been only fitting that when Ciel Phantomhive was gone, and your guise as a butler became a long distant memory along with my soul, that you would be honoured in a lasting way; the name Sebastian would have stayed in the Phantomhive family tree for the rest of our lineage…as it should be.’

_It wouldn’t have been perfect, but at least you would have been with me, in my family, always…_

He had first known he was infatuated aged fifteen. It had been a gruelling mission that had lasted more than a month; Ciel had been forced into feminine disguise again. Instead of his teacher, however, Sebastian had been best disguised as his suitor; a man who sought to make Ciel, as a young woman called Rebecca, his wife.

He had been forced to act like a simpering little girl for much of the time, relishing the moments behind closed doors where he could shed the constrictive clothing and return to being an earl and enjoying every quip that came out of Sebastian’s mouth together as they mocked the play they were forced to perform for their hosts. The sanctuary of his real title had surprised him, but not as much as Sebastian’s acting talents.

The demon was a perfect gentleman the entire time, his shows of affection for the role of suitor subtle and appropriate. Gentle and polite kisses on the hand, subtly lingering touches as they were made to dance at the frequently-thrown events, and a single chaste kiss that had been pressed to his cheek to fully convince their noble audience of their roles as young lady and potential inamorato. In that brief moment of contact, he had forgotten that he was Ciel Phantomhive, that Lucius Michaels was his faithful butler Sebastian, and had wanted to move the kiss to his lips.

The mission had been drawn to a close the next day in a violent bloodbath that had laid waste to the sick group that had been trafficking children into sexual slavery, and nothing more of the kiss that had been given had been spoken of again.

The years had passed, and that little flame had never once gone out. Instead it had flickered and flared, blazed even…the candle had never been extinguished.

He hadn’t realised how much his eyes and his words were revealing. Sebastian leaned lightly forward in his seat, and the man watched as realisation overtook his demon’s face. ‘Oh.’

There was no embarrassment. No shyness. No need for playing coy with the demon. Sebastian had seen the worst of the world and the worst of him. He was the embodiment of sin and dubious intent in the shape of a human man.

A man he was not allowed to feel affection for by law. Ciel swallowed around the lump forming in his throat. ‘It appears that for once, I must ask you to forgive me, Sebastian. I believe it is me who has overstepped the boundaries of what is appropriate interaction between a butler and his lord,’ he smiled humourlessly, then lay back down and rolled to face the empty space next to him, wishing that it wasn’t taboo to ask the demon to lie next to him of an evening, to stave off the terrors night brought whilst knowing that it was the only thing that would.

Familiar gloved hands rolled him back over to look into the handsome face before him, black hair hanging forwards and glowing eyes the most enamoured he had ever seen them. He knew it was wrong as he leaned up into the kiss that was bestowed on him, lips and tongue twisting with those above him in a long-awaited and long-overdue dance. He felt guilty that this love was not directed at his wife. But life had denied him happiness at too many turns, and he would be damned twice before he would let one fleeting moment of blissful weakness escape him.

The kiss was brief but passionate, leaving him breathless and still craving for more. He cursed himself for not having clean teeth or a fresh mouth, but it didn’t appear to affect Sebastian in the slightest as he straightened up to go prepare for the day. The demon gazed down into his eyes, and he caught the pining behind them that matched his own in intensity; one that had always been in front of him, but carefully concealed behind the butler aesthetic.

Sebastian really was the world’s greatest actor.

In an instant, the look was hidden, replaced by expressionlessness. Sebastian opened the curtains to his side, revealing the merest sliver of sunlight appearing over the trees of the wood. ‘Watching the sun rise is always a wonderful way to begin the day, my lord.’ The words were meant to distract him, he knew, and he decided to take the bait anyway. He slipped out of the bed, entirely naked and exposed, and stood before the window next to the demon.

Ciel could feel Sebastian’s gaze on him, drinking in every inch of his body that those vermillion eyes could reach and wishing that propriety could be damned. To beg for sinful pleasure from a demon…if he hadn’t already given up his soul to Sebastian for the promise of revenge, he would have given it up all over again to live in a world where the two could lay entwined in each other’s embrace until the end of days.

The sentiment was mutual.

He looked directly up into Sebastian’s eyes, locking gazes with him once more, and listened as the demon spoke softly to him in the gradually increasing light. ‘You will see many more sunrises in your lifetime, my lord, but I feel as if today’s will be one that…gives birth to something special.’

Sebastian gave a small bow of the head, eyes closing and one hand pressed over the hollow where his heart should have sat, and Ciel listened as he left the room without another word. He watched the horizon until the light became too much, contemplating what the words could have meant, then set about dressing himself to go give Lizzie her usual morning kiss.

As he reached the doors of Lizzie’s bedchamber, however, he caught a faint unpleasant smell in the air and the sound of retching, accompanied by her handmaiden’s soothing words. Lizzie had been fine the night before at dinner…

Sebastian’s final words to him before leaving his bedroom echoed through his mind once more, the touch of his lips still a faint ghost of sensation on his mouth as he realised exactly what the demon had meant.

Although alone in the hall, he was sure he could hear the butler’s chuckle ring in his ears.

 

It would be eight months of paranoia, fear, and polarising mood swings from both parties, but Ciel found himself back in that room with her, pressing a cool cloth to her head as she breathed through birthing pains not once, but twice more. The labour was short and easy this time, the pregnancy barely a day over nine months when her water had broken in the gardens of the Phantomhive estate. Finny’s panic had been tinged with excitement as he screamed across for the assistance of the other servants to assist her to her room for the birth.

She looked up into his comforting eyes, apprehension and fear clearly shared, and pushed.

Vincent Jonathan Phantomhive was born exactly five minutes before eleven AM, his fraternal twin Sebastian Lucius Phantomhive following quickly at precisely five minutes past the hour; an achievement that had been the cause of widespread celebration in the week following.

As Lizzie fell into exhausted and much deserved sleep, Ciel and Sebastian took up one twin each. The butler held the child named for himself, the baby’s big eyes blinking open and staring into his in fascination without a single hint to crying. Ciel lifted the one named for the grandfather he would never meet to his body and cradled him preciously, a small grin emerging as his finger was encompassed by a tiny hand. He glanced to the demon beside him, the fleeting thought of them looking like they were the parents dancing on his tongue and begging to be stated, but he kept his lips tightly shut, knowing it would only make his feelings harder to keep in check.

Both boys had a mop of dark hair like their father, but as they blinked, forest green nestled with emerald in crystalline flecks at every flutter of their perfectly black eyelashes; every inch their mother’s. Sebastian appeared as he had with all of Ciel’s children; calm and collected, but with the slightest hint of a proud smile that reached his eyes. It was filled with a love rooted as deeply as a father, and a silent promise to protect them as he had protected Ciel.

In that moment, his heart swelled, and Ciel let himself slip up once more.

 

Lizzie had opened her eyes just as their lips had touched on the other.

She had always suspected. As much as she had hoped and prayed that Ciel loved her in the way she loved him, she had never once seen his fond look change to anything else, even when embroiled in the activities that had given them their beautiful family. A look of true love was always one that she could never see…until his eyes fell onto his faithful servant. And there it would be; love, longing, need. And despite clear efforts to restrain himself, she had seen the same look come from Sebastian as soon as Ciel could not see him, the aesthetic he was putting forth slipping for just long enough for her to see the truth behind the unnaturally coloured eyes.

She wished that she could hate Ciel for not loving her as she loved him. She wished that she could despise Sebastian for being the one he loved so. She wished and wished that she could find it in herself to be vindictive and drive them apart, to force Ciel to find another butler or do without one entirely.

But above all, she cursed herself for loving them both so much.

Sebastian had always been the perfect gentleman to her. She had been to the wealthy residences of many nobles, and on more than one occasion, a servant had attempted to accost her on her way to powder her nose, or snuck a feel of her as they helped her out of her carriage. One particularly jarring time, one of them had cornered her in a corridor and threatened to violently relieve her of her virtue. Instead of fear, she had whipped a sword from the wall with a fiery flourish and sent them dashing back to their quarters with their tail tucked between their legs like a reprimanded dog, nursing more than one slice wound to their extremities and with a promise to finish the job if they tried such a thing again.

Ciel’s faithful butler had never once done such a thing. His hands had never dipped below her waist when they had danced at her wedding, never fondled above when helping her fix her coat in winter when there was a small child hanging from her arm. He had practiced fencing with her when she had been itching for exercise. They had, late into the nights where she had been unable to sleep, played billiards and discussed the contents of countless novels. He treated her as an intellectual equal instead of a silly little girl as other men did. He was the flawless, handsome butler, and in the privacy of the mansion, Lizzie could safely admit that Sebastian was one of her truest friends.

She couldn’t hate Ciel for at least trying to love her in the same sense she loved him. She knew that he had been reluctant to marry, insisting that it was a union that would leave her broken-hearted by his death. He had always been so sure he would die young and childless. And yet he had given her five beautiful children, even if one hadn’t ever been able to see the light of the day before his end. When she had woken every morning, he had walked in to greet her with a kiss, and at every birthday and Christmas, he had spoilt her and their children rotten with lavish gifts and adoring attention. He had made sure that she had been loved, even if it wasn’t quite in the way that she had always hoped. Ciel was a wonderful father, and had gone above and beyond to try to be an equally good husband.

But she had always known that his true affections had lain elsewhere and, in some strange sense, she was glad that it was someone who had shown himself to be so devoted. It was in that moment the odd thought struck her, and she had to stifle an amused giggle as not to alert the two men to her awakened state; when it came down to it and all was said and done, Sebastian was the only other being she considered to be worthy of, and would be accepting of, sharing Ciel’s affections with.

The two men pulled apart from the kiss, oblivious to her observation, and she discreetly gazed on as they pressed their foreheads together in sync, whispering their forbidden words of affection as they held her newborn children. The love between her husband and his servant would be a forbidden one until the end. But, it could never be accused that it was a false one. She would attest to that herself.

As she drifted back into deserved sleep, it was a fact that she found profound solace in.

**Author's Note:**

> So...yep. That kept me up late into the night a little while ago.
> 
> My interpretation of Lizzie for this fic: Lizzie is a kind and understanding spirit. Even with the Victorian view on homosexuality, as she grew older and wiser to the ways of the world, she would have been more mature than to simply be a jealous bitch or outright disgusted by her husband's feelings. She would be mature enough to read about and understand Roman and Grecian pastimes of boys and young men being kept as toys, and would be grateful that at least her husband's affections with his servant are consensual.
> 
> I'd like to think that, in the manga, she's more complex than simply a little girl who hides her physical badassery behind ruffles, and I really hope Yana pulls through on her character here. She gets portrayed a lot as this immature little girl, but she's thirteen/fourteen...of course she's going to have outbursts of immaturity. That's what we do when we're young!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, see you in the next one!


End file.
